Bonjour and Welcome to LaFrance.com

LaFrance.com is the home of the LinkedIn group "French Connections". Members will have to create an account. An email will be requested to activate your account. Upon responding to this email, you will be accepted into the new French Connections Group. Business and individuals will have a better way to promote their internet presence by creating their own web page and finding business or job opportunities at LaFrance.com.

You can’t believe this, François Hollande won the French presidential election on Sunday, capturing more than 51 percent of the vote to defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy (who is the president since 2007, only captured 48.1 percent) and become France's new president. French television declared the election for Hollande immediately after the polls closed Sunday. Moments later, Sarkozy told his supporters that he called Holland to congratulate him, and to concede victory.

They both 57 years old. Hollande, the socialist challenger, very narrowly edged Sarkozy, in a preliminary election two weeks ago, but since he did not win with an absolute majority, France law required a runoff between the top two candidates.

French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy gave birth to a baby girl, the first infant born to a sitting president of modern-day France, the French media reported.There was no official confirmation of the birth. The presidential entourage reiterated earlier Wednesday that no birth announcement would be forthcoming. The couple married in February 2008, less than a year after Sarkozy took office. The first lady has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship and the president has three sons from his two previous marriages.

They have retrieved the blackbox (flight recorder), they have listened to the voices of captains and co- pilots. You think they could find the cause of the crash, right? The BEA just released a technical report (see below). It contains only selective remarks from the cockpit recorder, offers no analysis and assigns no blame. It also does not answer the question of cause. A first analysis of the data was to be expected for the end of July, stay tuned.

According to AP, the leader of the International Monetary Fund and a possible candidate for president of France was pulled from an airplane moments before he was to fly to Paris and was being questioned Saturday by police in connection with the violent sexual assault of a hotel maid, police said.

"Air France has been informed by the French Accident & Investigation Bureau that a flight recorder (black box) from the Airbus A330, operating the Rio-Paris-Charles de Gaulle flight which disappeared over the Atlantic on 1 June 2009, has been found and retrieved.

This new step in the investigation is very significant as it may provide additional information as to the causes of this accident that remain unexplained to this day.

According to AP, a French family urged any nation that recognizes surrogate births to grant citizenship to the girls.

"We just hope that any nation out there can give our little girls citizenship so that we can finally take them home," said the girls' French mother from the western city of Uzhorod where the family is awaiting trial after being released on bail.

The family was detained last month for trying to cross the Hungarian border with the infants hidden under a mattress in their van. The parents have said they acted out of despair after the French government refused to issue the daughters passports because it does not recognize children born to surrogate mothers. A top French court upheld that stance in a ruling Wednesday.

In October 2010 Stephane Frédéric Hessel’s essay "Indignez-vous!" was published with a first printing of 6000 copies. By year's end 600.0000 copies had been sold. The publisher of this book is a small publisher working out of an attic in Montpellier, southern France, the book sold for €3, very very cheap in a country where book prices are regulated and kept high by the law.

Today the United Nations Human Development Index is released. France is the 14th place, the worst year for France since 2007. Notice in bold in the table below, New Zeland, USA, Germany, Liechtenstein and Korea moved ahead of France this year. With the strikes crippling the French economy, and those countries recover from the down turn, this may continue next year. And if Iceland or Luxembourg moves back to the top spot, France will be 15th next year.

According to AP, France's parliament has given final approval to a bill to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, a reform that has sparked weeks of strikes and street protests. The National Assembly approved the final text of the bill in a 336-233 vote Wednesday, marking its final hurdle in parliament. Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy is not expected to sign it for several weeks. The vote comes as two straight weeks of pension strikes are losing momentum. Still, unions will not give up, hope to revive the movement Thursday with nationwide street demonstrations and strikes expected to cause new hassles for air travelers.

According to AP, two French police officers will stand trial accused of failing to save the lives of two teens whose 2005 deaths sparked weeks of riots around the country, lawyers said Friday.

The officers will face charges of "non-assistance to a person in danger," said a lawyer for the victims' families, Jean-Pierre Mignard. The charge carries up to five years in prison and up to euro75,000 ($95,400) in fines.

Protests getting violent.

The strike by oil workers has been the most disruptive tactic yet — and in response, the Interior Ministry opened a crisis coordination center Monday just to focus on the conflict. Severe disruptions to air travel, public transport, schools and other facilities are expected.

Currently the strikers are winning. French oil workers defied the government's demand Monday to get back to work and end fuel shortages. Youths and truckers joined in, facing off against riot police and creating chaos on the roads.

* Aviation authorities have been forced to tell short-haul planes coming in to make sure to bring enough fuel to get back.

* The government ordered airlines to drastically cut back their flights into France on Tuesday, when labor unions plan new nationwide protests and strikes across the public sector.

According to AP, French oil workers expanded the strike Friday. All of France's oil refineries were on strike, and the government deployed police to force the reopening of several fuel depots around the country that had been blocked, raising concerns of possible gas shortages.

In France, workers at all 12 fuel producing refineries were on strike after two plants owned by Exxon Mobil and Petroplus voted to join the protest Friday, said Charles Foulard, a union coordinator at oil company Total SA.

France's transport minister authorized oil companies to use some of their reserves after trucking companies complained of difficulties fueling their vehicles. Dominique Bussereau told French radio station RTL that the country's stocks of fuel meant there was no reason for drivers to fear a gas shortage.

Isn’t that fun to strike again and again? How about open-ended strikes? This retirement age strike may never end. Tuesday's strikes marked the fourth day of protests in five weeks. Past walkouts lasted only one day. The battle over France's retirement age from 60 to 62 has gone on for months, but this week could be the final one. With the Senate expected to pass the pension reform bill by the week's end, some unions have upped the ante by declaring open-ended strikes, meaning Tuesday's walkouts could drag on for days or even weeks. According to AP, Workers tried to shut down France on Tuesday with strikes affecting transportation, schools and the postal service in a showdown with President Nicolas Sarkozy over his government's attempt to increase the retirement age by two years to save money.

According to The Associated Press, a Frenchman whose arms and legs were amputated is attempting to swim across the English Channel using leg prostheses that have flippers attached. Philippe Croizon, 42, set off from Folkestone on the British side of the English Channel and is expected to reach the French coastline early Sunday, after a journey that might take up to 24 hours. Croizon's specially designed leg protheses, which end in flippers, allow him to propel himself through the water. His truncated upper arms go through the motions of the crawl, and he breathes through a snorkel. The swimmer lost his arms and legs after being electrocuted in 1994 as he stood on a ladder adjusting his television antenna, which touched a power line.

The wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy has condemned the stoning sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which Iran temporarily suspended but did not throw out after an international outcry.

According to Armstrong, "There was something on the road. We could not stay on our bikes. I've never seen anything like that. As I got up and got going again it was a bit surreal. You got to the bottom [of the hill] to take stock of the situation and you didn't know what to do."

The Tour de Franceis a bicycle race known around the world. It typically has 21 days, or stages, of racing and covers not more than 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi). The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 kilometres (1,500 mi), the longest in 1926 at 5,745 kilometres (3,570 mi).The three weeks usually include two rest days, sometimes used to transport riders from a finish in one town to the start in another. The race alternates between clockwise and counterclockwise circuits of France.